


Watsonia is Coming

by gardnerhill



Series: Joan's Beez [5]
Category: Elementary
Genre: Crack-a-doodle-doo., Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-23 01:45:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7461753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few more detectives join Sherlock and Joan’s agency.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watsonia is Coming

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2016 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #11, **Threesome:** Not necessarily the NSFW kind, but a threesome: John Watson being close to and/or working closely with someone besides Sherlock Holmes.

“This is a new one on me.” Watson eyed the gondola hovering at eye-level, and the aviator-capped tortoise at the helm. Overhead, the soothing humming of 500 beautifully-matched _Euglassia watsonia_ drones kept Clyde’s airship aloft.

“Ms. Hudson informed me that Clyde was feeling left out of our activities and wishes to become involved in our work.” Sherlock shrugged on his coat and helped Joan with hers. “We mustn’t keep Detective Bell waiting.”

“Don’t worry, Ms. J, we got your back too!” one of the drones called.

“Even if we can’t sting nobody,” another drone added.  
*  
“Yeah, we can still scare the crap outta them. Humans are SO stupid. …Uh, present company excepted, Ms Watson.”

Clyde stamped his right foot once. The entire drone-pulled gondola turned right, with a soothing hum of wings.

“That’s how he lets us know where to go,” one of the middle drones said. “He don’t talk too much. Toitles ain’t that bright.”

Clyde groped with his mouth at the 500 silk threads buoying his gondola; he selected one, and yanked hard.

“OW! All right, all right, I take it back, sheesh!”

“Okay, everybody, simmer down or you’re staying home. We have a job to do.” Joan looked at the neat little craft with Χελώνα (Chelona – “Tortoise”) painted in white on the side courtesy of Ms. Hudson, and the look of determination on the reptile’s face through his wee goggles. She smiled. “I’m not sure how you plan to contribute, Clyde, but you and Marthe Hudson clearly put a lot of work into this, so let’s see what happens.”

***

Bell straightened up from the strange marks all over the dumpster over the body as he heard Joan’s car approach and park. He turned to greet his friends as the two got out – but the words stayed unspoken when a swarm of bees oozed out of the back seat and flew toward him in a rough zeppelin shape, with a tortoise sitting in a gondola tethered beneath the insects. “Um. Isn’t that your turtle?”

“Fill us in, Detective, and our auxiliary partner may yet prove his worth before day’s end.” Sherlock’s tone was as matter-of-fact as it always was at a crime scene.

With a shrug, Bell turned back to the corpse and the strange white-painted stick-figures of dancing people that surrounded the gunshot body of a male Caucasian. He wouldn’t put it past Sherlock to use this as some kind of weird test of his professionalism or his temperament. He could work with a swarm of bees and a walking rock looking over his shoulder.

The humans examined the body and looked at the strange stick-figures. “Some form of gang communication, perhaps,” Joan said. “A warning, or a justification.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Could be completely separate from the murder, or put here as a distraction.”

They continued to trade theories while Bell filled them in on Hilton Cubbett’s last hours, the soft buzz of the drones’ wings providing an oddly soothing backdrop to the site. So when the gondola disappeared – at a surprisingly fast pace – all three humans looked up in surprise at the abrupt loss of that soothing drone.

“Clyde? Clyde!”

But the Tortoise was gone, veering hard around the block of buildings and out of sight.

Joan stood up, prepared to go after the airship, but was halted by the Doppler sound of a human yell getting closer.

Round that same block, running the other way and heading toward them, came a young man (male Caucasian, early 20s, clothing and facial hair indicating a regular in this neighborhood), with his arms over his head, one hand still gripping a cylindrical metallic object. And he was running from a cloud-shaped swarm of bees following hard on his heels, Clyde’s gondola swinging back almost to a horizontal position behind that powerhouse.

The yelling man looked at what was before him, saw Bell’s badge, and threw his cylinder into an open cellar door. Into a basement that would mean getting a warrant and a search before this got disappeared –

The swarm veered and dove into the open door, the gondola swinging back and then forward. They heard the clatter – not a metallic clatter of the cylinder rattling down the loading platform and then to the concrete floor, but the thud of the cylinder hitting wood.

As Bell began to talk to the young man, out from the cellar arose the bee-powered airship like a blimp from its hangar. Resting securely on board the gondola was the white spray-paint can. Evidence secured.

“Exemplary reflexes, Clyde.” Sherlock smiled.

Joan addressed the air-power. “And good going, all of you.”

“Thanks, Ms. J,” “No problem, Joanie!” “ _Gracias, Señora. ¡Que fuerte olor del pinto!_ ”

Joan beamed. Like most New Yorkers she had enough of several different languages to communicate in the biggest polyglot city in the world – and since her namesake bees took to their NYC home in everything including lingual diversity that was valuable at the brownstone too. “Aha, you smelled the same paint used for these marks, did you? Show us where you found him.”

Bell finished cuffing the suspect and handing him over to backup before he followed the brownstone’s denizens to see if there were other marks.

Thump thump. Clyde stamped all four feet hard on the deck at once. The gondola flew backward, tearing toward the police car where the suspect had just seized a gun from one policeman and aimed it at them – and it was knocked out of his hands by the solid weight of a tortoise dropping out of a clear blue sky (i.e., the gondola) and directly onto his cuffed wrists like a 2-pound cannonball.

The suspect was hustled into the back of the squad car with assault and intent to commit added to his “for questioning” charges; Bell prepared to head to the station to question his suspect; the shaking cop retrieved his gun and faced not only a refresher on safety but the knowledge that he’d been saved by a damn turtle; and the civilian detective agency got into Joan’s car to follow Bell downtown.

“We’ll need to make a detour on the way.” Sherlock settled into the shotgun seat.

Joan nodded. “Mario’s grocery is just a couple blocks away. We’ll need a head of butter lettuce and a jar of honey for our new partners.”

Clyde snapped his jaws and the drones cheered.


End file.
